rself, I
am the house mother, and you are all my children; you would not have
hesitated to tell your mother if you had found any of your brothers or
sisters doing wrong, should you?"

"No, ma'am; I should have gone to her at once."

"And not felt that you were a tell-tale?"

"Not for a moment."

"Just so, then, it is here; we are all one family, and there is
nothing mean in reporting to me, more than to a mother. It's the
motive that prompts the telling that gives it its moral character. It
is the noblest that can act wisely, and escape the odium of
tell-tales; and, my dear Marion, I feel quite sure that for the future
I can trust you."

Marion went away with a light heart. "Trust me? of course she can,"
she said to herself; "but I am so sorry for Carrie Smyth."

Carrie, in truth, even after listening to the terrible denunciations
Miss Palmer had read to her, was to be pitied for her moral as well as
mental dulness. She went through the ordeal of her talk with Miss
Ashton with far less feeling than Marion had shown; and the only
punishment she minded was being put back into the class of beginners,
and being told that the next time she was found doing anything of the
kind, and told a falsehood about it, she would be expelled from
school.

This, on the whole, she would have liked, for study was detestable to
her, and there was nothing but the ambition of her mother that made
it seem necessary in her home surroundings.

Both Miss Palmer and Marion were delighted to have her leave the
class. Marion kindly kept the reason for her having done so to
herself, though many inquiries were made of her by the other
scholars.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MARION'S LETTER FROM HOME.

Soon after the first of January, Marion received the following letter
from her mother:--

"We have all been made so happy to-day, my dear child, by a
letter from Miss Ashton. She writes us how well you have been
doing, and how much attached to you she has become. All this we
expected as a matter of course, but what delights and satisfies
us most, is what she says of your religious influence in the
school. We knew we were sending you into an untried life, that
would be full of anxieties and temptations. With all the
confidence we felt in you, we should hardly, no matter how great
the literary advantages offered, have liked to put you where the
character of your surroundings would have been less helpful; and
to know that y